


Safe in my arms (all your fears will pass away)

by DreamingOfABetterYou



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Protective Arthur, Why do I always hurt Eames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29964435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingOfABetterYou/pseuds/DreamingOfABetterYou
Summary: A dream-gone-wrong leaves Eames vulnerable and hurting.Arthur helps.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	Safe in my arms (all your fears will pass away)

**Author's Note:**

> My darlings,
> 
> the general idea of this fic is taken from the shower scene in Casino Royale (my favourite Bond movie, possibly due to this scene at least to some degree :D). I love caring!Arthur so much.
> 
> Title from the fantastically heartbreaking 'Into the West' by Annie Lennox.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Lots of love, Liz xx

Arthur heard faint sounds of running water as he let himself into the hotel room. Stripping off his coat, he called out “Eames?”, but received no answer. The other man probably just couldn’t hear him over the noise of the shower spray, but Arthur had a bad feeling about it. They had just finished a three-person corporate job, perfectly in the realm of the ordinary, so much so as to be almost routine. A militarised mind was to be expected of CEOs these days, he thought bitterly as he stored away the PASIV in the double-enforced safe. Their extractor Jocelyn still had gotten everything they needed and they had gotten in and out fairly smoothly, unusually aggressive projections notwithstanding. Still, Arthur mused as he took off his shoes and chucked his dress socks into the laundry compartment of his suitcase, Eames had been antsy the moment they woke, eyes oddly distant. He had left the building with barely more than a fleeting nod towards Jocelyn, ignoring Arthur altogether.

When Arthur knocked on the half-shut bathroom door and called out the other man’s name again, being only met with silence, he started to really worry. He stepped into the steamed-up room, tense shoulders automatically relaxing a few degrees at the cosy temperature. Clothes were scattered around the room – not that that was much out of the ordinary – and Eames was under the shower spray with his back turned to be door, completely motionless.

In an instant, not even bothering to undress first, Arthur opened the glass door and stepped into the generous space behind Eames. (One clear advantage of upper-class hotels – next to good mattresses and a high degree of discretion when it came to personal customer information – were the spacious showers.)

“Eames” Arthur muttered, not quite daring to reach out yet. The water rained down on the other man’s tattooed shoulders with an amount of force he knew the forger liked, but Arthur could see the way that his muscles still tensed and bulged uncomfortably.

“You were gone so suddenly. What’s going on?”

Eames shook his head, only now acknowledging Arthur’s presence but still not turning around.

“I…I can’t.”

Arthur frowned, carefully reaching out to place his hands on Eames’ shoulders. The other man flinched, drawing in a quick gasp of air, but soon leaned into Arthur’s gentle though firm touch.

“What do you need?” Arthur asked quietly, at a loss of how to handle this. Him and Eames had been sleeping together for nearly a decade now, on and off, depending on whether they worked on the same job or if they had partners at the time, but this kind of intimacy was terribly unfamiliar.

Eames hummed noncommittally. “Just…this is fine” he rasped, voice unusually subdued, his shoulders slowly relaxing and loosening down under Arthur’s light massage. He carded his fingers through Eames’ wet hair occasionally, scratching his scalp in a way the other man seemed to enjoy if his content sigh was anything to go off.

“Can you tell me what happened down there?” he asked after a few minutes of peace.

Eames took in a shuddering breath, but before Arthur could tell him to forget it, to just stay like this, he spoke.

“I was leading the mark’s projections away from Jocelyn so she could get at the safe, but I ran into a one-way street. And then I couldn’t shoot myself out of the dream” he broke off for a moment, swaying forward under the weight of his own words “because if I did, they would have gotten only more aggressive on you and Jocelyn, and I…They…”

Arthur felt Eames shake under his palms, and wrapped himself around the forger in a tight embrace from behind to keep him from coming apart at the seams. He pressed his forehead against the wet nape of Eames’ neck, squeezing his eyes shut as the other man’s hands flew up to anchor themselves on Arthur’s forearms holding him tightly across the chest.

“Shh, I’m here” he tried to soothe as Eames’ sobs shook both of them. “I’m with you.”

“They...” Eames gasped for air, “I can’t.”

“You don’t have to say it. You’re safe now, you know that, right? Do you need your totem?” Arthur’s voice was calm and collected, but inside he was desperately begging for Eames to say no, to say he knew where he was. Mal was still a fresh wound in his mind.

“No, no” Eames was quick to affirm, with a trembling voice. “Just… She had a wicked subconscious. It’s hard to shake off, even after doing the job for ages.”

“What can I do to help you?” Arthur muttered against Eames’ neck, chin now hooked over his shoulder in order to feel him even closer, the forger’s naked back moulded against Arthur’s chest.

“You don’t have to do anything, Arthur” Eames insisted. “We don’t normally do this.”

Arthur shook his head, dragging his wet hair along Eames’ skin in the process; he wanted him to feel everything. Everything that was real, and here, and now. Everything that didn’t mean pain.

“I want to, for you. Please. Let me.”

When Eames eased his steel grip off Arthur’s forearms, he braced himself to be shrugged off, but the forger only turned around in his arms, ducking his head sheepishly as he sniffed. When he met Arthur’s gaze after a short, tense silence, his eyes were swollen and red, and Arthur _ached_ for him.

“Stay?” Eames asked near-silently, jaw tensing as if embarrassed of the request. Arthur desperately wanted to reach out to cup his face, to trace gentle lines along his jaw, to wipe away his tears, but as many times as they had fucked over the last years, Eames had never cried in front of him, or shown any sort of true vulnerability, and he wasn’t sure which kind of tenderness the other man would allow. So he opened his arms and simply replied: “Of course. Come here.”

Eames fell readily and heavily into Arthur’s embrace, fists clutching tightly into the soaked-through wool blend of his suit jacket. Arthur folded himself around the other man, arms stretching widely around the bulk of his shoulders, the breadth of his heaving ribcage, and rocked them soothingly under the shower spray.

“I’m ruining your suit” Eames muttered into the fabric of his grey button-down shirt which by now was plastered to the skin uncomfortably.

“I don’t give a fuck about my suit” Arthur replied truthfully, his voice possessing just enough of an edge for Eames not to fuss but to duck his head back into the crook of Arthur’s neck, his trembling slowly subsiding under Arthur’s low shushes and reassurances and the hot water pouring down over the two of them.

They stayed wrapped around each other for an interminable amount of time, until Eames finally stirred, his eyes a bit clearer and more focused now.

“Welcome back” Arthur offered quietly, pushing a strand of hair out of the other man’s face as he turned off the shower with his free hand. Eames clung to him like a lifeline as he gently manoeuvred them out of the shower cabin, and the naked trust and vulnerability in his gaze twisted in Arthur’s heart. He wrapped Eames up in a lavishly comfortable white bathrobe before peeling himself out of his soaked clothes, leaving them hanging over the shower wall for now and donning a bathrobe himself. Tenderly towelling the other man’s hair dry, he took care not to cover his face or to yank him around too much; he didn’t specifically know what the projections had done to Eames, and he was not keen on making the other man relive it through his own hands.

It spoke for how much Eames was still in his own head that he didn’t even offer a token protest at being coddled so, not even speaking up when Arthur basically herded him to bed and tucked him in before slipping in next to him. On their sides, facing each other, Arthur reached out to fix the collar of the forger’s bathrobe, laying it flat where it had been bunched before, his hand coming to rest just over Eames’ heart, trying to ground them both with the touch.

“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly into the space between them, easy words for a difficult question.

Eames tried a smile, but it almost immediately crumbled. He swallowed heavily. “Better” he promised, nodding lightly to emphasise the point, as if Arthur couldn’t see him tremble still. They lay like this for a few breaths, with Arthur studying the effects that the job had taken on Eames’ face. His face was still a bit pale even though the shower had left him flushed all the way down to where the expanse of his broad chest was mostly covered by the bathrobe, only peeks of tattoos and chest hair showing, and the furrows on his forehead and between his brows seemed to be more pronounced.

He’d have trouble sleeping tonight, Arthur knew it, but then again they were both terrible sleepers – at least when they slept without any chemical support. Shame, that; he missed natural dreams.

Arthur was just about to launch into a hopefully amusing story about his neighbour’s dog – which Eames loved with a truly absurd passion; Arthur had theorised several times that Eames only came to his house in upstate New York in order to maybe see the dog, and that the sex was just a way to distract Arthur from this plan; it never failed to make the forger laugh and tackle Arthur back into a horizontal position – when Eames reached out and parted the folds of Arthur’s bathrobe with a semi-stable hand without looking at him, warm fingers closing around his cock.

“What are you doing?” Arthur asked, genuinely confused, as Eames started stroking him slowly, just on the edge of too tight, just the way Arthur liked.

“You should get something out of this at least” the other man replied in a quiet voice, jaw set mulishly, his eyes fixed on a point around Arthur’s collarbone.

“Don’t” Arthur shook his head, covering Eames’ still-moving hand with his own and drawing it away from his crotch. “I’m here because you need me, not because I’m hoping to receive a sexual favour or some bullshit.”

The forger frowned, mouth pursing into a tight line. “It’s no problem, really…”

“Eames” Arthur interrupted him, just enough bite to make Eames stop in his tracks and finally meet his eyes. “Stop” he added gently.

The other man pulled his hand out of Arthur’s grasp sheepishly, tucking his hands under his armpits, whether in an attempt to look more reserved or to self-soothe, Arthur wasn’t quite sure. “Why would you stay?” he muttered, muscle in his jaw ticking.

Arthur sighed quietly, running a hand through his wet hair; thankfully, the water had washed out the product that he used to slick it back without much residue. “Because I care a lot about you, and I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

The forger seemed genuinely taken aback by this, enough for his gaze to be terribly open and vulnerable for a moment before he seemed to remember himself and his eyes shuttered into something approaching neutrality. “Arthur…” he breathed dubiously.

Arthur shrugged, faux-casually, even as he felt the pulse pounding in his ears. “I’m not sharing your room because I can’t afford my own. Or because of your six a.m. blowjobs.”

The forger snorted an unexpected laugh, eyes gleaming with mischief, mouth finally remembering how to curl into a smile at least for a moment. “You do like them though, don’t you?”

Arthur took care to roll his eyes even as he tenderly ran the backs of his fingers along Eames’ tattooed forearm, following the thorny vine that sprung into mismatched flowers every few inches.

“Don’t change the subject” he scolded playfully, but allowed: “But yes, of course I do.”

“We don’t have to make this into something it’s not” Eames stated carefully, and Arthur could see the movement of his biceps flexing even through the thick material of the robe; a sign of nervous fidgeting much more than a sign of the desire to draw attention or show off. His fingers stilled on Eames’ warm skin, but he didn’t pull back; not just yet.

“If you want, we can talk about this tomorrow. You’ll feel better after a night’s sleep” he offered quietly, frowning when Eames shook his head immediately.

“No, I’d rather talk now."

"Are you sure?" Arthur asked dubiously. "We have time."

Eames sighed, but Arthur imagined - perhaps foolishly - that there was something fond in the sound. "Do you really want this?...Me?” Eames asked, sitting up with his back against the headboard. His eyes were unreadable as they watched Arthur uneasily mirror him.

“If you don’t want this to be a relationship, that’s fine, and we never have to speak of it again” Arthur said quietly, hands twisting nervously in his lap. He tried to make it sound believable even as the heaviness in his stomach that had settled there the moment he saw Eames basically storm out of the office earlier grew even more unbearable at the idea of being rejected.

“But I _want_ you, Eames” he insisted, meeting Eames’ gaze straight-on, “God knows I do. We would be great together, you know that.”

The other man’s mouth ticked up into a gentle, indulgent smile as he hummed. “We would…Are you sure, though?” he asked with a deep frown. Arthur finally humoured himself, reaching over and smoothing out the worry between Eames’ brows with gentle rubs of his thumb before cupping his jaw tenderly in his hand.

“I’ve been sure for a while. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up” he confessed with a quirk of his lips, not wanting this moment to be heavy, not wanting Eames to feel guilty.

Eames gaped for a moment, then covered Arthur’s hand on his face with his own. “Darling…” he began incredulously, obviously ready to formulate doubts about Arthur’s commitment – for such a brilliant, beautiful man, Eames was terribly insecure about himself, deep down – but Arthur stopped him immediately.

“I love you” he exclaimed clearly. “Very much.”

“Fuck” the expletive tumbled out of Eames’ mouth completely unbiddenly, if his shocked and embarrassed gaze was anything to go by. Arthur couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I mean” Eames caught himself, scooting closer to Arthur, “I love you too.”

Arthur grinned. “I hoped so.”

“Well, I do” Eames repeated, almost stubborn, if it wasn’t for the blinding smile overtaking his tired features.

His lips were still stretched into a smile when Arthur kissed him.


End file.
